


From the Sea

by darkrosaleen



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Mostly Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Selkies, Sharing a Bed, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/pseuds/darkrosaleen
Summary: Silna's grip is tight on the spear when the seal looks at her.





	From the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).

Silna's grip is tight on the spear when the seal looks at her. Its eyes are as deep and dark as the winter sky, and it looks at her with the steady, thoughtful gaze of a man. A shudder goes through Silna's body; she can't shake the feeling that she knows those eyes, and those eyes know her.

When Silna was a girl, her father had taken her out hunting for the first time. Her hand had trembled as she looked at the face of the young seal, at the dark eyes which looked so much like a person's. It was hard to look into those eyes and see an animal to be hunted.

Silna's father had steadied her hand with his own, and he had wiped her face when she wept over the still body of the seal. He showed her how to prepare the meat, how to treat the bones, how to thank the seal's spirit for giving them food and fur. Silna never wept over a kill again.

Still, something in this seal's eyes makes her hands tremble like a girl's. The creature is still looking at her, looking and looking for much longer than a prey animal should. It's almost like it's studying her.

Silna shivers again, and the spear drops out of her hand and clatters onto the ice. Startled, the seal turns and dives into the sea with a splash, leaving Silna alone. She stares out over the water for a long time before turning back, not sure whether she's happy or sad to return without meat.

-

Silna is woken by the sound of something hitting the skin at the entrance to her hut. She stiffens into alertness with a stifled gasp, straining to hear the shape of the thing moving outside her door. It drags against the skin, then shifts on the creaking ice. It sounds big, but not too big—maybe a seal, or even a young walrus or caribou. Grabbing her knife, Silna wraps a blanket around herself and quietly walks up to the entrance.

The thing at her door is not a seal. It's a white man, naked and curled shivering around a dark scrap of wet fur. He lifts his head and looks up at her with dark, familiar eyes. 

She is certain now of what she saw. A seal had looked at her with the beautiful eyes of Harry Goodsir, and now Harry sits in front of her alive, after she saw his body dead and butchered like seal meat.

"Lady S-Silence," he chokes out, teeth chattering, before trying to get up on his knees and collapsing at her feet. Silna quickly crouches down and wraps her fur blanket around him, rubbing warmth into his white skin. He is as pale as the snow, so pale he is almost blue like a corpse. He _should_ be a corpse.

Silna doesn't realize she is crying until Harry lifts a gentle hand to her cheek to brush the wetness aside. It breaks something open inside her, and she begins sobbing, pulling Harry close and crushing her face into his wet curly hair. He smells like the sea, and she can't understand how he's alive after lying outside naked and wet in the cold. But he's alive, so alive, warm and breathing against her.

It's only when she hears his teeth chatter that she thinks to pull him to his feet and drag him inside the ice house. Wrapped in furs and lit by the warm glow of the lamp, Harry's skin begins to look more flushed and healthy, although he's still shockingly pale against his dark wet hair. His eyes study her hungrily, just as the seal had done this morning.

"I'm so very glad I found you," Harry says softly, reaching to touch her hand on the blankets. "It sounds impossible, but I know God led me through the ocean to your door." He laughs nervously. "Or maybe it was one of your gods, one of the spirits of this place. I don't know what to believe anymore."

Silna laughs, and Harry looks confused. She struggles to remember the way they had spoken with their hands before. In a strange way, even that had been easier than some people she spoke to in her own language. _I don't know also. You died. I saw you._

Harry's eyes go soft, and he squeezes her hand against his chest. "Yes, I died. I remember dying. Then I remember waking up in the ocean, swimming freely as if I had no need for air." His hand tightens on the scrap of fur he brought inside. "I had a different body, one that was sleek and fast in the water. I didn't feel cold skin or burning lungs, although I had to surface for air eventually." 

Curious, Silna pulls the wet fur from Harry's hands, finding an almost intact sealskin. It is the same color as the seal she'd seen earlier.

She can't hold it for more than a moment before Harry grows agitated and pulls it back again, tucking it under his arm. He looks sad and scared again. "I'll have to go back to the sea soon. That's how the stories go, isn't it? At least let me stay with you until then, my dear girl." 

Instead of answering, Silna pulls back the furs and lies down next to Harry. She tells herself she's warming him up, but the odd heat in her belly at the sight of his naked body tells her otherwise.

Harry is right. Eventually, the seal spirit inside him will yearn for the sea again, and he will leave her bed to return to the icy water. Silna cannot keep him, any more than she could keep a wild seal in her home. 

But Harry is alone like her, far from his home and his people. Like her, he will never have a wife or raise a child or belong to a community.

Heart racing, Silna pulls back enough to fit her hands between them. _We're alone. We're outside. Be alone with me._

Harry laughs, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. "Yes. Yes, my love, of course." He leans in and presses his mouth against hers.


End file.
